Abel Melveny

I brought every kind of machine that's known-

Ginders,shellers,planters,mowers,

Mills and rakes and ploughs and threshers-

And all of them stood in the rain and sun

Getting rusted, warped and batterd,

For I had no sheds to store them in,

And no use for most of them.

And toward the last, when i thought it was over,

About myself as my pulse slowed down,

And looked at one of the mills I bought-

Which I didn't have the slightest need of,

As things turned out,

And I never ran-

A fine machine, once brightly varnished,

And eager to do its work,

Now with its paint washed off-

I saw myself as a good machine

That life had never used.